The Power of Stuttering
“Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God. All the neighbors were filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, “What then is this child going to be?” For the Lord’s hand was with him.” (Luke 1:64-66)
Friends of ours told us about the youth pastor that their church had brought on staff who had a stuttering problem. During his initial interview, the difficulty in speaking was brought up and talked about. There had been other positions in other places that the person had been immediately taken out of consideration for because of his start-and-stop pattern of communication. However, the interview committee of our friends’ church went deeper than words and took the time to discover the person’s heart and passion for ministering to young people.
His hiring has been a Godsend for the church’s passion for ministering to the young people of their community.
But God has a way of getting us to sense His direction…and then take us to another decision that tests the level of our commitment. The church, in unspoken ways, congratulated itself on the triumph of obeying the call of God in regards to their stuttering youth pastor.
It’s something we’ve all done. Patted ourselves on the back for the boldness that has usually been reserved for the heroes of motion pictures, or a segment of one of those special interest Paul Harvey stories from years-gone-by. We describe it as being the result of our obedient response to the leading of the Spirit or a result of our spiritual maturity.
But in the workings of the Almighty, this congregation was put in a position of having the stuttering pastor give the message one Sunday morning. Not just a devotional thought to the youth gathering or an opening call to worship, but the sermon of length and substance. In church life, the sermon is the main event…the culmination…the takeaway for the entire week. It is often the fodder for the table dinner conversation later on that day.
And now a guy who has a hard time completing a sentence without interrupting himself is going to be the conveyor of the “meat”.
Our friends said there was a bit of uneasiness that morning. It wasn’t the children who were squirming, but rather their parents.
And God then used the stuttering, sputtering youth pastor to speak deep truth to the auditorium that was filled with uncertain people. The stutter was still a part of the message. In fact, it was an integral part of the theme. His words reached down and touched the hard-to-reach spots of people’s souls.
In the glitz and fanciness of the Sunday church productions, rarely are there connections made with people’s souls. We may be impressed with the graphics and the harmony in the voices of the praise team, but it’s like watching a Major League Baseball game in late June. Since there are 162 game in the season, it doesn’t mean that much to us. After all, there will be another game tomorrow…and after all, there will be another sermon next Sunday.
Who can understand the ways of the Lord, and who can know the results of His leadings?
Some people might like to put a Benny Hinn-end to the story and envision that the youth pastor was cured of his speech problem that Sunday, kinda’ like Zechariah’s tongue being loosed at the birth of his son, John, in Luke 1. However, the youth pastor still stutters, but it isn’t seen as a limitation of his abilities, but rather a part of him that he has not allowed to limit him.
How often do we minimize the working of the Lord in our lives because of our lack of coolness, or because we don’t feel we understand some of the things that are said in the Bible, or even because of something that happened in our life that we feel we can’t be restored from? Even more than that, how often to we discount the value of others because they have some kind of imperfection that distorts their Ken-and-Barbie potential?
The things we allow to hold us back are sometimes the very things that God will use to bring glory to Himself.
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